Why we need more than a divine avatar
A church in Switzerland has created a computer-generated AI Jesus. St. Peter’s Chapel in Lucerne, ironically the nation’s oldest church, now has cutting-edge technology that enables people to talk with an AI version of God’s Son. When you enter a confessional booth, a lifelike avatar on a computer screen offers advice based on the Bible and is available in more than one hundred languages. Around nine hundred conversations between people and the machine have been registered so far.
However, visitors are warned against sharing personal details and informed that their interactions with the avatar are at their own risk.
Of course, the real Son of God already knows every detail of our lives (cf. Luke 5:22; Hebrews 4:13). Interactions with him are not a risk but a blessing beyond compare (Hebrews 4:16).
And there’s the fact that we need a God who will not only give us advice but actually act in our lives and our broken world on our behalf.
“They know how to play dead for a shooter”
Billionaires are building nuclear bunkers in preparation for the destruction of mankind. One is surrounded by a lake that can be transformed into a ring of fire to protect its occupants. At a time when global nuclear weapons spending has surged to $91.4 billion, you can understand the concern.
But bunkers can’t protect us from the global mental health crisis “engulfing the world’s workplaces,” or sinking high-rise condos and luxury hotels, or Vladimir Putin’s desire to “usher in a new international system that affords Russia the status and influence Putin believes it deserves,” or the proliferation of school shootings.
At the beginning of the school year, one teacher found a seven-year-old boy lying in the hallway as another student showed him what to do if a shooter entered their classroom. “When do we practice playing dead?” the boy asked.
“They can’t even tie their shoes,” the teacher said. “But they know how to play dead for a shooter.”
“We never saw anything like this!”
In Mark 2, we find Jesus “at home” in Capernaum (v. 1). Here four men brought a paralytic, but the crowd gathered to hear Jesus was so large they could not get near him. So they went up on the roof, made an opening, and lowered the man on his bed to Jesus (vv. 1–4).
When he saw their faith, he forgave the paralyzed man’s sins (v. 5) and then said to him, “Rise, pick up your bed, and go home” (v. 11). With this result: “He rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all” (v. 12a). In response, “They were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We never saw anything like this!’” (v. 12b).
Let’s recount what Jesus did in this remarkable episode:
- He welcomed the man brought to him.
- He forgave his sins (this is the only time he did this with regard to physical healing, so we must not think that all illness is the result of sin).
- He healed the man so completely that his paralysis was gone and his atrophied legs were immediately able to walk.
- His miracle brought glory to God.
What Jesus did for this man, he can do for any of us (cf. Hebrews 13:8). Our problem is that many of us relate to him more as an avatar who gives advice than as a King worthy of our complete trust and obedient service.
“The mystery of new birth shone upon us”
Consider what Jesus gave up when he left his glory in heaven to take on our fallen flesh. Remember the abject humility of his birth and the horrific suffering of his death.
He had already given us his authoritative word, containing his guidance for every dimension of our lives. As Pope St. Leo the Great (c. 400—461) noted, he could then have taught humanity “by appearing to them in a semblance of human form as he did to the patriarchs and prophets.” However,
Unless the new man, by being made “in the likeness of sinful flesh,” had taken on himself the nature of our first parents, unless he had stooped to be one in substance with his mother while sharing the Father’s substance and, being alone free from sin, united our nature to his, the whole human race would still be held captive under the dominion of Satan. The Conqueror’s victory would have profited us nothing if the battle had been fought outside our human condition.
But through this wonderful blending, the mystery of new birth shone upon us so that through the same Spirit by whom Christ was conceived and brought forth we too might be born again in a spiritual birth; and in consequence the evangelist declares the faithful to have been “born not of blood, nor of the desire of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12).
People who “turned the world upside down”
Now we have a choice to make.
- We can ignore the Christ of Christmas, as many are doing in our secularized society.
- We can treat his birth as a tradition to be remembered and then returned to the attic for another year.
- We can ask him to forgive our sins and save us from hell, then fulfill occasional religious duties but otherwise live as we wish.
- We can seek his advice for our problems, then do what seems best to us.
- Or we can submit every day to him as Lord, then obey his word in the power of his Spirit, whatever the apparent cost to us personally.
Here’s my point:
“Part-time Christianity” is a contradiction in terms because “part-time lordship” is a contradiction in terms.
When people see Christians sold out to Christ, believers who follow their Lord whatever the cost, whatever he asks, whatever it takes, our world cannot remain the same.
Such people “turned the world upside down” in their day (Acts 17:6). Such people will do the same again in ours.
When last did it cost you something significant to follow Jesus?
Thursday news to know:
*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.
Quote for the day:
“Nothing is impossible for the people of God who trust in the power of God to accomplish the will of God.” —David Platt
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